CGN to SZG (or A cheap flight to Mozart's home town on day VI)

If the title of this post makes no sense at all:  
CGN is the airport code of Cologne/Bonn Airport while SZG stands for Salzburg Airport.

And CLICK on THIS LINK for some background music that should be a perfect accompaniment for this post and city.  

WHERE the heck IS Salzburg?  
Yup. I had to look it up too ;-)

Salzburg is in that strange part of the world where Germany is ALMOST right next to Italy and where Switzerland ALMOST borders Slovenia.  I say ALMOST, because Salzburg is in between. Oh right: Salzburg is in Austria. Oh right, the music: Mozart was born here!














And what the heck am I doing here?

No, No, it's not a  Neil Young concert. (wouldn't hat be nice? ;-)

BUT HANG ON: I'm jumping ahead already (an activity needed to fill those long hours between waking up and breakfast).

6:30 and breakfast time finally arrives. After 5 days in this country my tightening belt is already trying to tell me that I eat too much of the wrong food.  Hearty breakfasts and huge portions in restaurants are taking their toll on my midsection. If I drank beer instead of wine, the damage would be even worse. Not good!  Must climb some mountain today to combat peaking cholesterol !

During breakfast I realize that tales of my travels will no longer be spread by my spare mom.  During the funeral, people I had never met but whose names I knew from spare mom's stories knew surprisingly much of the adventures of 'My 'Grosses Kind', as Regine always called me.  Gross in this context can be translated as tall(er), large(r), great(er), old(er).  When I met Regine's son for the first time last Friday, I had to realize that he was almost a foot 'taller than me.  Since I don't consider myself 'large' and don't particularly feel 'great' these days, I'll just accept that she was referring to my age.  But I will always be grateful and a little proud that she considered me 'her child' ;-)

 Walking to the train station I have to pass through a Christmasmarket again.

 Even without tipsy visitors, it is already too gaudy for me.

I catch the S-Bahn from Central station before 9 am and it delivers me within 12 minutes to a fancy train station at Cologne/Bonn Airport.  

I do like this small airport (I flew to Brest from here last year) despite the slightly anal security people.  At first I am asked to place my jacket 'nicely'/'properly' into the tray, to which I reply "Ah! Deutsche Ordnungsliebe". Then my backpack is X-rayed twice and I am informed that the freezer bag that I use to carry my toothpaste etc. is too big and that next time I should use a bag with a 1 litre volume.  Sure. Whatever you say, storm-trooper lady |-).                                                                                        Normally I'm not one to buy books at airports (unless it's Neil Young ;-)  but I can't resist this one. A murder mystery set in Brittany, where anyone behaving as the Germans in the above paragraph probably would have fresh fish thrown at the them.

All those places that I haven't been yet !

And then I see it. A smoking lounge!  And this one deserves the name.  Sitting in one of its club chairs with a side table next to me I feel sorry for the non-smokers on the regular airport benches outside!

The flight only takes one single hour. But because someone in my row has leg issues, the stewardess asks me to relocate to an empty 3-seater in Row 2 of the plane.  This is some kind of elevated class compared to my original row as indicated by dividers behind Row 3 and the number of fur coats on the bloated middle-aged women in the first 3 rows.  I try to hide my Karakul hat, because the lady right in front of me has a whole friggin Karakul COAT. (When I get to Salzburg I will to my utter astonishment discover that fur coats and Karakul or Persianer coats in particular, which in Germany went out of fashion with my Grandma's generation, are still en vogue in Austria.  I will see strong women who only this morning may have milked cows in a flowery type of dress that I haven't seen in 40 years dressed in fur coats for their visit to the city)

... ueber den Wolken ...

... muss die Freiheit wohl grenzenlos sein ...

I arrive at Salzburg Airport at noon. From the plane I had already noticed the mountainous character of the region.

The map above doesn't really prepare one for the topography of Salzburg.  There are high 'islands' rising steeply from the plane that the river Salzach whittled down to an even level.

Public ORDER in Austria will be disturbed by MANY things.  This is worse than Germany !!

I take the public transit bus to the main train station (cost: a civilized Euro 1.70), and then walk the short distance to my hotel.   I am supposed to meet Seamus & Jemma (Yes, they are the reason I came to Salzburg) at M32 restaurant at 1:30 pm but I realize that I will never get there on time if I walk there.  So I decide to splurge and take a taxi.  After a few km I am glad I did; we are driving up hills that are much steeper than they looked on the map. I arrive at M32, a restaurant associated with Museum der Moderne at exactly 1:30 pm. Seamus, of course, is nowhere to be seen. The Irish are famous for many things, but not for their punctuality. Ah well, that gives me time to take some pictures ;-)

Seamus and Jemma show up before I give up on them and start ordering.

After a yummy lunch (A Wienerschnitzel; When in Rome ....) and learning that one orders a double espresso here by requesting a Grosser Brauner (a Large Brown One !!!!), we walk along the ridge of the Moenchsberg (Monk Mountain)

The very kafkaesque Castle sits on an even higher outcrop.

From our vantage point just below the castle, we can look down onto the Dom.

This of course is where the Buerger of Salzburg hide their Christkindlmarket

I've managed to travel through Frankfurt and Cologne without having to submit to drinking Gluewein in one of these, but I am a guest here and Jemma is a romantic who adores this side of Salzburg.  So here is the proof:  I drink Gluehwein. (Actually, the photographer is a little slow at this point and my wine is all gone (surprise), so this particular Gluehwein shot is STAGED !

This is Austria: Don't expect anything to be real !

The need for sleep and authorship soon hits me hard and I leave Seamus and Jemma with friends the local ice rink and set out on my own on the ~half hour walk to my hotel through an unknown city.

A Bubble-Blower

Pressure in my bladder is building so I don't pay too much attention to where I'm going while my eyes frantically scan for a tree in the dark.  I finally find a public wash-room INSIDE the tunnel through the mountain behind Neutor (New Gate).  Afterwards I have to admit to myself that I am lost. An inquiry sends me back on my proper way.

Neutor; Almost something out of Lord of the Rings

Salzburg is very easy to navigate once you have found the river Salzach.  But unlike in many other cities, the river is not that easy to find.

After finding my hotel with no further inquiries I go out again to the restaurant in Salzburger Hof, where I eat a semi-decadent dinner of medium-rare lamb-ribs arranged into a crown.  I usually don't like fancy-pansy food, but this one TASTES AMAZING.

I stumble back to the hotel and crash at around 9 pm

A good adventure. A good day!

How you met my mother ( Day V: Cologne - Ruhr valley - Cologne)

4 am seems to be the time that I'm settling on for getting up in Germany.

Apparently they still have a Concorde there (not my pic)

I finish yesterday's post and book a decent hotel room in Roissy, almost in walking distance from Charles-de-Gaulle Airport, for $CDN 56.  Wow!

6:30 am breakfast time finally is upon me!  During breakfast I buy another train ticket (Isn't the internet great?  They're even cheaper than at the counter). To maintain a semblance of suspense, let's just say that the journey will take place in 5 days on a TGV and will bring me to my FAVOURITE beach.

At 9:20 I am at Cologne's Central Station again.  I seem to hang out here a lot !

Little people unaware of the higher level

The train is 15 minutes late. And this in a country that defined itself by the fact that its trains were ON TIME. It would be nice if this was counterbalanced by increased tolerance of others, but this being Germany that is not the case. A lose lose situation !
But brining a bicycle on a train these days doesn't seem to be a problem any more, so there does seem to be some improvement in some areas.

Boozing on the train is fine. Just don't throw the bottles out of the window!

I call my mother to tell her that the train will be late but still she is waiting for me at the train station when I arrive. Her Volvo is of the station-wagon type, but somehow the particular design prevents us from getting q bicycle into the back and closing the hatch.  So the hatch gets bungeed closed as much as it will close.

After the bike finds a new storage place in mother's basement we head for lunch in a semi-fancy restaurant.  Food is not too bad but the portions are way to big.  Then it's time for a dog walk but the dog doesn't want to do its thing.
Maybe the dog doesn't like the fact that it's being walked through the post-industrial waste land around the train station.  Graffiti offers the only hint of colour and beauty.

I'm back on the train at 2:40, trying not to fall asleep. The grey weather seems to act as a sleeping pill for me. We'll see what happens when I see the sun tomorrow.

Walking from the train station to my hotel is VERY DIFFICULT. No, it's not the fact that I'm falling asleep again.  It's the thousands of tipsy Weihnachtsmarkt tourists meandering across the streets or congregating with their Gluehwein in the tightest passages. As if that wasn't bad enough, there is a Santa Claus marching band blocking my way.

The whole band then gathers in front of store right across from my hotel and keeps brassing

Fare Well, Spare Mom (or A funeral on Day IV)

Again I am wide awake at 4 am.  Breakfast is not until 7 am.  My room is cold but at least I am allowed to light a fire by way of smoking ;-)

Temperatures have been creeping up to 8 Celsius since the snow in Frankfurt but just like in Vancouver, that entails rain.

I use my time before breakfast to buy my Thalys ticket for Tuesday. I had planned to take that train next Monday, but there seems be a semi-general strike going on in Belgium, which has the effect of causing cancellations of international trains passing through that country.










When I sit down for breakfast at 7 am my ear catches the traffic report playing on the radio.  10 km standstill on this Autobahn, 5 km on this other Autobahn. Gridlock here and barely moving traffic there.  And all that at 7 am. Those car commercials on TV always seem to promise hot friends, unlimited freedom of mobility as well as happy faces and families.  But the reality is so vastly different and no-one seems to notice.

OK, Driving a VW in storm-drenched San Francisco might actually live up to the fantasy today.

I take a quick walk along the river at 8:30 am and it is still darkish out there.

I am reminded that the winter solstice is approaching and with it the shortest day of the year.

... and lead us not into temptation ... ;-)

colours just a touch too garish?

I am changing hotels today and not wanting to carry much around with me, I leave the bicycle at the old hotel and deposit my luggage at the new hotel

The funeral takes place in the Eifel region, a one hour car drive from Cologne, in a Rest Forest.  A biodegradable urn is interred next to a tree in wild forest. The temperature here is probably not more than 3 degrees and the crowns of the high trees emit a howl in response to the wind gusts.  I get a lift here by lovely and hot (blush) Tatjana, the sister-in-law of my spare mom's son, who as I learn during the drive was in my graduation year of my high school. Small world!

Right at the beginning of the funeral I put my foot in my mouth by greeting Jan, Regine's son, who I had not seen in ~35 years, with the words 

"Jan, how's it going?".  

Tactful visitor from Canada, indeed.

Afterwards everyone heads to my spare mom's place, for coffee and cake.  I had dreaded entering her apartment without her being there, but even though all the furniture and belongings are the same, it already doesn't feel like her place any more.  

Rusted sun on Regine's balcony.  Shine no more.

Klaus and his husband Toni, who was a very very close friend to my spare mom, give me a lift back to my hotel.

I can instantly see what attracted Spare Mom to Toni and by being around him it almost feels as if my spare mom's wit, gentleness, and care for others was still alive in his body language and speech patterns. 

I realize that I haven't had a decent and proper meal since I have arrived in Germany (Chocolate, pizza, and cheese or cold-cut-laden buns for breakfast don't count) and head to Mai Thai just around the corner.  One bite of their seafood curry pot (3 pepper symbols on the menu and this pot is PACKED with seafood!) and I forget that it's cold outside.

Then it's back to the hotel and the elderly female receptionist who locks the outside doors as soon as it gets dark (5 pm) and who will 'try' to assist me to print out my train ticket for tomorrow.